Why I started this wiki
Gidday! My name is Davo, and I'm in the eighth year of a one-man study into the physical, mental, and financial of early* retirement. * I guess I can still call it "early" as I'm not yet 62, which means I've still got three, or is it four, years before "official" retirement. Maybe I will never reach official retirement age because the government will keep increasing the age of (meagre) entitlement? When people asked me what I do, I used to delight in telling them "nothing." "How can you do nothing?" they might say. And I'd reply "Well, I'm not working, I'm not retired, I'm not getting the state pension, or any other state benefits. I pay my own way." My income came partly from a small pension which started twenty years ago as part of a redundancy package, and partly from the rent on my home in England. What did doing nothing actually mean? Wake up, computer, breakfast, computer, cafe, computer, lunch, computer, beach, computer, pub (for dinner) computer, bed. For a while I enjoyed my lifestyle. I managed to get a few short term contracts working part time in data entry to supplement my income although I was always short. Every few months I'd either transfer some money from England or sell some shares here in Australia to pay off my credit card. Then the work dried up. I didn't mind at first, not at the start of a Sydney summer when I could go to the beach almost every day. Then I started feeling depressed, not just "down", but clinically depressed, and I was worried enough to start seeing "my" psychologist again. (I want to say "my therapist" but I think that makes fun of mental illness.) I noticed that my depression always lifted when I went to the beach, usually to Bronte. But then I started to think "What happens if I come to the beach one day and I still feel depressed?" This was in February, 2015, by the way. I did two things, both of them whilst I was at Bronte, using my mobile phone. First, I booked my first "real", i.e. going away from home, holiday, and a cruise to the South Pacific, and, more importantly, I enrolled with the Open University to study for a degree in Humanities. Financially, I'd also received a boost the previous year when an English employer pension started paying out when I passed 60. With the extra income I'm now, mostly, getting by, and no longer dipping into my savings. So, here I am in February, 2016, having almost completed my first year with the Open University, getting by financially, and I'm no longer depressed. What am I doing creating this Wiki then? Going by my previous attempts at blogging nobody is going to read it. I do know for sure that one person will read it, my OU tutor, because my final assignment is to create a web presence. My web presence has to have a theme, and my theme is, partly, my studies with the OU, which will take up the next five years, and partly, my life in retirement. Ends Links to other pages. (I'm still learning how to do this properly! My Educational Resume